BEYOND the brutalist 1960s exterior of the Brambell building in Bangor’s Deiniol Road lies a scene which could almost belong to the Victorian era.

The huge skeletons of some of the world’s greatest creatures stand shoulder to shoulder, while mounted heads stare down from the walls.

Specimens of all kinds from all over the world – a narwhal’s tusk, the enormous fossilised antlers of the extinct Irish Elk – fill the room, and are labelled with the names of donors from the area’s powerful families.

This is Bangor University’s natural history museum, a little-known but fascinating collection started in the 19th century.

Professor Deri Tomos is my enthusiastic guide to the mammals, reptiles, birds, amphibians, fish and minerals, which are still used to teach students and visiting schoolchildren.

“A century ago, every zoology department would have had a similar collection,” said Prof Tomos.

“It’s very old-fashioned by now, but that makes it easier to use for teaching.

“Things tend to be locked away in modern museums, but here you can almost stick your head inside the skeletons.

“It lets you get under the skin – quite literally – of the animals.”

Sir James Dobbie, the first professor of chemistry and geology, started the museum in the university’s former home at the Penrhyn Arms, and much of the collection still evokes a bygone age.

A label on a glass case gratefully acknowledges that the great bustard within was “shot by the donor near the Guadalquivar River, Southern Spain, February 6, 1891”, while a mounted buffalo head carries a plaque which reads, “British East Africa, 1911”.

Some of the exhibits, like a red-faced spider monkey donated by “GW Duff Assheton Smith, Vaynol”, were gifts from the area’s land-owning families, who may well have shot the animals for sport.

Other species which feature in the collection, such as the Tasmanian devil and the kakapo, are by now under threat of extinction.

“The museum teaches an important lesson about how we’ve moved on in the past century,” said Prof Tomos.

“The emphasis is now on conservation rather than collecting specimens.”

The collection would once have been bigger, but many items have been thrown out or simply deteriorated over the decades.

Some particularly valuable exhibits, such as a rhino’s horn still shown in a photograph at the museum, were stolen.

Others, like the shrunken heads and the human skeleton, have fallen prey to changing social and scientific mores and been removed.

Among the exhibits which remain are the bones of a circus elephant which died on a visit to Bangor, the fearsome-looking snout of the sawfish, a two-headed lamb from Bethesda and the skeletons of all manner of creatures, from the duck-billed platypus to the western gorilla.

“From these skeletons, we can learn about the development and incredible diversity of life on Earth, and about how living things work,” said Prof Tomos.

“There’s a lot more than just dry bones here: every exhibit has its own story.”

The museum will be open to the public on Saturday, March 17 between 10am-4pm, as part of the university's science festival.